My house smells like Sunday

I have a pot roast simmering on the stove, and my house smells like Sunday.

I don't suppose we really had pot roast for lunch every Sunday when we were kids, but that's the strongest memory I have: that wonderful salt-and-peppery smell and the snapping sizzle as  Mother seared the roast just before we left the house for Sunday school and church, and then the warm, rich smell when we came back a couple of hours later.

We pretty much tumbled out of the car and into the house to go change out of our "church" clothes while Mother readied the mashed potatoes and gravy. I have memories of salad and something green—I suppose green beans or peas or something—most of the time, but Sunday for me was pot roast and mashed potatoes and gravy. Anything else was just extra.

From my perch among the riches I  have, I can hardly imagine how Mother fed a family of seven on one roast that was probably not bigger than the one in my pan—and then had enough left over to drown in a thicker gravy or simmer with a bit of barbecue sauce or chunk into a hearty soup for supper on Monday—but somehow she always did. And I remember liking the roast the second time around every bit as much as I liked it the first.

Mine won't taste as good as Mother's, I'm sure. I got started okay, but then when I had the pan too hot, I hit the wrong stove button to turn it down and inadvertently turned on a different burner instead. Fortunately, nothing burned except one side of the roast, and maybe simmering it a while will sort of even that out.

And I've never been able to replicate her gravy quite the way she did it, so we're likely to have something closer to "au jus" than what I remember, but that will be okay.

I'll like our potatoes better: Number One Son and I will leave the skins on (no instant potatoes in our house!) and leave them a little bit lumpy (so they don't feel like they came out of a box). I remember Mother pulling potatoes out of the pan and whipping them up with her old yellow Mixmaster to get them light and fluffly, and one way I've always rebelled, I guess, is that I exalt the lumps that boast the "real," hearty, original potato.

And I have no clue what we'll scrounge up for the "green" on our plates, but I know we'll have to find something. I've never really glommed onto the fancy new "food pyramid" or two that have come into vogue in recent years, but I still try to keep an eye on the "basic four," so our protein and starch will obviously have to share space with at least one vegetable.

I'm not dragging out Mother's old gold-rimmed china for dinner tonight, and I won't be drinking tea from her goblets. It won't be quite the same on my stoneware and plastic cup, but I can tell from the smell wafting from the kitchen that our meal will be just the ticket on this slightly chilly evening.

And I'll go to bed in a house that smells like Sunday.